


Sleeper in the Valley

by thesadchicken



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, F/M, World War II, no fluff we read angst and cry like men, this is a sad story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25129699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesadchicken/pseuds/thesadchicken
Summary: “She opened the letter, pressed her palm to the paper. His words came spilling out. She searched for a time and place, desperate to be wrong, knowing she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t.‘Le Coeur de Lion, at midnight.’She knew all of his letters by heart.”World War II. Kathryn Janeway is a Women's Airforce Service pilot. Chakotay is a soldier. When she’s called upon to ferry a plane to Europe, they agree to meet in a small French bar.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 26
Kudos: 27
Collections: J/C Photo Prompt Fic Fest 2020





	Sleeper in the Valley

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank [torri012](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Torri012/pseuds/Torri012) for making the gorgeous manip that inspired this story, and [Bizarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bizarra/pseuds/Bizarra) for organizing this event!  
> I also want to thank my wonderful boyfriend for having the best ideas and for helping me with the hours of research that went into this fic (we learned so much about WASP and military ranks in WWII; half of it didn't end up in the actual story, but it was fun!) 
> 
> I listened to [The Cottage By The Beach](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTo4tqxpbFg&loop=0) from the Atonement soundtrack while writing this, and I highly recommend listening to it while reading.
> 
> The title is from the English translation of "Le Dormeur du Val" by Arthur Rimbaud. The poem itself is beautiful, you can [read it here](https://www.frenchtoday.com/french-poetry-reading/poem-le-dormeur-du-val-rimbaud/).
> 
> This is a sad story. Read end notes for spoilers.

Kathryn looked over the control panel at the plane’s shadow, stretched out on the ground below, wavering between valleys and hills. It was inviting; greenery so lush she could almost smell the rain stroking the foliage, the damp smoothness of the leaves when the clouds had parted, and the sun had appeared —perhaps all would be well, after all.

 _All will be well_ ; a mantra. A prayer sometimes. Kathryn placed her hand on the glass, her slender fingers outlined against the sky. How blue, how empty and wide. In moments like these she felt she could touch it. ‘ _The sky is the color of your eyes.’_ Her hand left the glass and fell to the breast pocket of her uniform: there, against her heart, his letter was folded into tenths.

The plane droned quietly. Kathryn felt the familiar hum of its engines, like a comforting hand on her shoulder. Up ahead, buildings began to appear, rising on the horizon. She flew higher, taking herself to the very edge of the sky. She was Icarus, but her wings were made of metal and steel. Not even the sun could burn her now.

* * *

_Le Coeur de Lion_ was empty but for an old man, nursing his drink in the corner. Kathryn sat at the table in the center of the room, facing the door. Yes, she was waiting for someone. The bartender, a short man with a friendly face, acknowledged her with a nod.

The young man who’d welcomed her upon her arrival at the base was called Tom Paris. _Have you ever been to Paris, ma’am?_ No, no she’d never been to Paris. _Me neither, but I will on my honeymoon, with the girl of my dreams. She’s waiting for me back home_. Kathryn hadn’t known what to say. She’d smiled.

 _All will be well_.

She’d delivered the plane. She’d patted the old girl’s spinner as Sergeant Paris had congratulated her for such a successful journey. She’d asked him, perhaps a little too eagerly, about _Le Coeur de Lion_ , and he’d nodded knowingly, _it’s right next to the bakery, you can’t miss it_. She’d taken the time to change into her dress uniform: the dark green skirt and the jacket over the olive shirt. He would be wearing the same colors.

Now she waited. Her excitement was hard to contain, impossible to ignore. An ebb and flow of emotions, and the wild beating of her heart. The bartender disappeared. A few moments later an American song started playing. She smiled at this small kindness, but she was not homesick. She couldn’t be—not when he was so close.

She remembered an evening like this one, four thousand miles away, across the ocean. They’d been together, and the bar had been crowded, everyone had been singing along to the record, _and if I tried, I still couldn't hide my love for you._

The memory was perfect in her mind, clear as if it had all happened yesterday: the smell of cigarettes and cheap perfume, the voices, the verses she’d sung along with everyone else, _you ought to know, for haven't I told you so—a million or more times._ And how Chakotay had refused to sing; his shy smile when she’d nudged him.

“Come on, Chakotay,” she’d leaned in and bumped her shoulder gently into his, her voice barely carrying over the noise.

“I don’t know the words,” he’d shrugged, smiling still.

“Liar!” she’d grinned back.

His dark eyes, gleaming like a sky full of stars. She’d reached out and touched his hand, just her fingertips against his palm. The bar had been dark, but she had seen his lips part ever so slightly, his sharp intake of breath. He’d held her hand, slowly closing his fingers around hers, and she’d shivered at the touch.

“If you won’t sing, will you at least dance?” she had asked.

That was how they’d found themselves at the back of the bar, swaying to the music. Concealed by the crowd’s indifference, they’d felt alone in the world. His hand on her waist, the rise and fall of his chest under her palm, the warmth of his breath against her cheek—such sweetness, and oh how she’d melted into his arms.

“Kathryn,” he’d sighed.

She had looked up at him, at those perfect lips forming her name, and she’d wished he’d say it again, and again, and again. A thousand things she could have said to him in that moment, a thousand thousand things about the sky and the stars and his eyes. Instead she had stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

“Something to drink, mademoiselle?” the bartender called from across the room.

Kathryn abandoned her reverie, shaking the remnants of it out of her head. “I’m waiting for someone,” she said. As if to convince herself. She hated the pity she read in the bartender’s strange yellow eyes, his slow shrug. She was not waiting in vain. She couldn’t be.

She looked at the clock, ticking above the bar. _One hour late_. Chakotay was never late.

She reached inside her pocket, found his letter. She held it, still folded, between her fingers. Perhaps she’d misread? Misunderstood? Perhaps this wasn’t the right time, the right place? Maybe he was waiting elsewhere? She didn’t dare open it, didn’t dare read it again and find that there had been no mistake, that he was simply late. _No_. No, he was never late.

Fear coiled around her stomach, lodging itself in her chest like a bullet. She opened the letter, pressed her palm to the paper. His words came spilling out. ‘ _My Kathryn_ ,’ her eyes always saw first. Those two words in his elegant handwriting were as familiar as the sound of his voice. She searched for a time and place, desperate to be wrong, knowing she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t. ‘ _Le Coeur de Lion, at midnight.’_ She knew all of his letters by heart.

Suddenly uncomfortably warm, she removed her jacket and folded it over the back of her chair. _All will be well_. He was going to walk through the door, and she was going to wrap her arms around his neck and breathe him in, and tell him she’d missed him, oh how she’d missed him.

She remembered him saying that; _I missed you_ , over and over as he’d pressed kisses to her neck. Those first months apart, when the war had begun… even now they seemed like years, like forever. Their passion had swept over them that night, claiming everything that they were. Her eyes had met his between kisses, between the sheets. In that moment she’d known there would never be anyone else.

Rolling around in bed, a night that lasted a thousand nights, and at the end they’d done it once, twice, never enough. She remembered her fingers digging into his back, his hips crashing against hers, her thighs trembling with pleasure.

“I love you.”

He had said it without fear. Desperate, real, inevitable; _I love you_. She’d held him closer, whispered, “I love you too.”

Morning had found them in each other’s arms. They hadn’t slept, only dreamed, their fingers intertwined. His head had been resting on her chest, and he’d been listening to her heartbeat.

And then the war had come back to haunt him, for the first time since he’d fallen into her embrace. She had felt it in the odd stillness of his tired body, the way his thumb had stopped drawing circles on her skin.

“I’ve killed men.”

His voice had been empty, distant. She’d closed her eyes, ran her fingers through his hair. “You had no choice,” she’d whispered. “You had to survive.”

He hadn’t heard her. “I don’t remember their faces. I thought I would. But they’re just… bodies.” He’d shifted, tearing himself away from her, as if in horror. “You’re sleeping with a killer, Kathryn.”

And she’d seen it, the panic in his eyes, the way his hands left her body—he’d been scared to leave blood stains on her skin.

“Chakotay…”

“How can you bear it?” His face had been filled with something close to revulsion. Directed at himself, at the memory of dirt and shadows and fallen bodies.

It had nearly killed Kathryn to see him like that, to see the quiet madness that had assailed him, those once smiling eyes. She’d touched his naked shoulder. Anger had swelled in her chest. They hadn’t asked for this war, this battle that never should have been theirs. It would take his life, maybe—how cruel that it had taken so much more already. He would die even before death.

She hadn’t been able to accept that. No, not him, not her gentle Chakotay. She had held his face between her hands, looked into his eyes. “Don’t forget who you are,” she had said; an order, a command. In the silence of the room there had been nothing else. _Don’t forget who you are_. _Don’t let them take that away from you_.

He had closed his eyes. Soundlessly, his tears had fallen onto the sheets, heavy with unspeakable pain. She’d held him against her, feeling the steady stream of his sorrow against her chest, her stomach. She’d refused to cry; for him, she’d held back. His body had been shuddering, unable to contain the horrors it had witnessed.

She’d held his hands in hers, his scientist’s hands, made for digging up fossils, not shooting guns. She’d kissed his fingers, his palm, his wrist. _I love you_ , she’d said, a hundred times, _I love you_.

Later she’d dried his tears, and he’d let his head rest on her shoulder. They’d looked out the window, at the sunlight filtering through the curtains, the painting on the wall.

“Killing is the worst thing I've ever had to do,” he’d said.

But there was something worse she could think of, right now, as she waited for him in _Le Coeur de Lion_. One thing he could do that she would never forgive. She looked up at the clock once more. Time was a foreign thing to her. Hours went by like seconds, and seconds like hours. Morning would be here soon.

The sound of the door being pushed open startled her more than it should have. She turned, hopeful, hopeless, head swimming with possibilities.

It was Sergeant Paris. He crossed the room, his pale eyes avoiding hers. _No. No, please, no_.

He stopped in front of her table. He did not take a seat. He opened his mouth, closed it. What was there to say? He didn’t even know her name.

The bartender stopped pretending to clean the counter. The old man was snoring in the corner. The song that had been playing faded to silence—here it was: the terrible silence, and the young man trying very hard not to look at the letter in Kathryn’s hands. Finally he spoke.

“There was a bombing just outside Saint-Clair,” he said. “Our troops were coming that way.”

 _Were_ , she noticed. Past tense. She shook her head. “There must be a mistake; they should have been here yesterday—”

If there had been any doubt in Sergeant Paris’ mind regarding the reason for Kathryn’s presence here, there was certainly none left now. He took a deep breath. “You asked about _Le Coeur de Lion_ earlier, that’s how I knew you’d be here,” he said, apologetically. “I just thought you’d want to know…”

The words seemed to die on his tongue. Kathryn would have thanked him for coming all the way here just to let her know, but she couldn’t speak. Her voice was lost somewhere she couldn’t quite reach.

The edges of the letter were crumpling in her white-knuckled grip. She looked at it, at the way he’d written each precious word, the drooping ‘J’s and delicately curving ‘C’s. She thought of his hands holding the pen, his lazy half-smile, sunlight flickering on his dirt-stained skin. ‘ _Your letters make me forget all this death_ ’, he’d written.

No. It was not over. It couldn’t be over.

She stood up, chin held high. “Take me there.”

Paris blinked in surprise. “Ma’am?”

“There must be survivors. They’ll need our help. You’re going to take me there.”

He stared at her for a moment more. She knew what he saw: a woman with a letter in her hand, waiting alone in a bar. A woman wearing a uniform, the letters ‘WASP’ embroidered on the jacket she’d discarded. A woman who’d flown so far, who’d waited so long. Fierce, furious, uncompromising.

He nodded. “Alright.”

* * *

Chakotay had wanted to marry her before leaving. He’d told her so one morning as they’d lain in bed, limbs tangled, bodies content. She’d laughed.

“I’m serious,” he’d insisted, smiling.

She’d been engaged before, but never married. At forty, she hadn’t imagined herself a bride. _Some things are for the young_ , she’d told herself.

But the war had made them all young. Clinging to every sliver of existence, every day, minute, second. Never enough time, never enough life.

She’d leaned in to kiss him. “Yes,” she’d whispered against his lips.

They’d agreed to have a small, private wedding. Kathryn’s father hadn’t been a bigot, but not all the family members who had entered her life upon his death were so decent. She hadn’t wanted them to spoil hers and Chakotay’s happiness. Every moment would be theirs and theirs alone.

Three days before the wedding, she’d been called upon to ferry a plane from the factory to an airbase.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Chakotay had promised.

But one man’s promise meant nothing to the senseless, relentless beast that advanced through Europe and sometimes crossed the ocean to bare its teeth at them. The soldiers had been forced to leave earlier than expected. When Kathryn had returned, Chakotay had already been miles away.

Now she was in a military staff car, speeding through the French countryside, and he was supposed to be close, so close. The fields were unbearably green in these moments before sunrise, rushing past the mud-flecked windows. She resented such beauty, such life, when all she knew was the pounding of her heart in her ears and the fear that threatened to swallow her.

Sergeant Paris’ hands tightened on the steering wheel. He was an exceptionally good driver, although reckless when it came to speed. _Good_. Kathryn looked ahead, ignoring the worried look on the young man’s face. There was smoke in the distance.

The fields faded from green to brown, then a sickly yellow. The sky above was no longer welcoming, no longer wide and free. Tendrils of smoke filled the air, choking out all color. If Chakotay was looking up now, he would not think of her eyes. He would think of nothing, of the great emptiness that had enveloped the world.

Paris stopped the car. The small country road ended abruptly. The earth had been turned inside out; mud and dirt and tree trunks, all strewn across what had once been a valley. No, there was more: Kathryn noticed the upturned trucks and cars, lifeless, some burning quietly. Weapons and tents and clothes. Things, man-made things, damaged and useless. And there, scattered among the rest, were the bodies.

Several military cars and ambulances had stopped at the edge of this desolation. Soldiers, nurses and doctors were running around in the pale light of dawn; the living mingling with the dead. Orders were being shouted. As she flung open the car door, Kathryn heard other sounds, coming from the fallen.

The moment her feet touched the ground, she broke into a sprint. Maybe Sergeant Paris had tried to stop her—she didn’t know, didn’t care. She ran into the fire and smoke and wreckage, her eyes searching frantically, her breath coming in gasps. Too many broken bodies, too young to be so still, so cold. And yet each face that wasn’t his filled her with grim relief. She hated herself for it. As if that would change anything, as if it would return these boys to their mothers and fathers.

His name was on her lips, in her throat. _Chakotay_. She yelled it; she called for him, again and again. _Chakotay_. _Chakotay_ , until it became a lament, until it became a sob.

Her memory was cruel, flooding her with images of him. She saw the lake, the sailboat, his shirt billowing in the wind. How his happiness had been written on his face—that dimpled smile. He’d said something funny and laughter had poured out of her lips, uncontrollable. Her dress had been the color of daylight, the color of daisies. He’d been disarmingly handsome, beaming at her with undisguised affection.

She remembered the record player in his apartment. He had often played that song, the one they had danced to the evening she’d kissed him for the first time.

And then she found him.

She stumbled. A breath. She fell to her knees next to him. _Chakotay_. _I’m here. It’s me_. _Open your eyes_. She ran the back of her hand down his cheek, wiping away the dirt and blood. He stirred, eyelids fluttering.

“Kathryn…”

She would have cried then, had she not been crying already. “I’m here…”

For the sound of her voice, he smiled. That dimpled smile.

“Stay, please,” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He tried to reach for her, his fingers twitching weakly. She took his hand in hers, brought it to her lips. He opened his eyes, staring up at her with utter wonder. “You really are here.”

Those words, tearing the air from her lungs. She did not want to know of the times he’d dreamed her, of the times he’d imagined her by his side. The times he’d lost all hope of ever seeing her again. She did not want to know his loneliness, the nights he’d slept alone under unforgiving starless skies. All she wanted was to hold him, press a kiss to every scar and bruise, watch them all disappear under her touch.

“Please don’t cry,” he rasped, although his own eyes were wet.

Kathryn swallowed back a sob. “I’m not crying,” she lied.

Another tired smile lit his unshaven face. “Good.”

There was blood everywhere, but she did not look at it. There was only him, them, together. _All will be well_.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She’d imagined this would be it, the one thing she could never forgive. ‘ _Don’t die_ ,’ she’d written in her letters. ‘ _Don’t you dare die’_. ‘ _Never_ ,’ he’d written back, tongue-in-cheek.

But how could she not forgive him? He had survived everything else, the hunger and the pain and the cold nights, the bullets and the rain and the illness. At the moment of the explosion he had been running back to her. Running, his legs made faster by hope.

They still hadn’t been fast enough.

Kathryn kissed him, imagining she could breathe life back into his shattered body. There was nothing to say, here at the end of the road. Perhaps she could keep him with her a little while longer; perhaps she could stay with him here tonight. They could watch the constellations, name them one by one. _Imagine travelling across the stars, Kathryn. Wouldn’t that be an adventure?_

He coughed, and his hand reached blindly for hers.

“I won’t leave, Chakotay. I’m here.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Always.”

He closed his eyes. She stroked his hair, and he was silent for a while. Her tears struck the ground like raindrops. Then the faintest sound—a melody, a song. He was humming. She recognized it immediately. Their first kiss.

 _You'll never know just how much I miss you_ , she had sung against his mouth, after he had kissed her back. And they had swayed and swayed in the back of the bar, dizzy with the promise of another kiss. There had always been another kiss.

 _You'll never know just how much I care_.

She sang to him, ever so softly. Another kiss, then she sang him to sleep.

_You went away and my heart went with you  
I speak your name in my every prayer  
If there is some other way to prove that I love you  
I swear I don't know how  
You'll never know if you don't know now_

__

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Major Character Death. 
> 
> The song is called “You'll Never Know” by Vera Lynn (1943).
> 
> I stole the line “killing is the worst thing I've ever had to do” right out of Chakotay’s mouth (season 4, episode 4, “Nemesis”).


End file.
